Patty Farrell of Colonie holds a photo of her daughter Laree Farrell-Lincoln, who died in 2013, on Monday, Aug. 31, 2015, during an overdose awareness candlelight vigil at the Spirit of Life Fountain in Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union archive) less

Patty Farrell of Colonie holds a photo of her daughter Laree Farrell-Lincoln, who died in 2013, on Monday, Aug. 31, 2015, during an overdose awareness candlelight vigil at the Spirit of Life Fountain in ... more

Detail from this year's Colonie Central High School public service billboard in memory of Colonie graduate lost to heroin use, Laree Farrell-Lincoln, on Thursday May 7, 2015, in Colonie, N.Y. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union archive) less

Detail from this year's Colonie Central High School public service billboard in memory of Colonie graduate lost to heroin use, Laree Farrell-Lincoln, on Thursday May 7, 2015, in Colonie, N.Y. (John Carl ... more

Photos of Laree Farrell hang on a neighbors building next to Patty Farrell's backyard Thursday, May 22, 2014, in Colonie, N.Y. Laree died of a heroin overdose at her mother's home in 2013. (Will Waldron/Times Union archive) less

Photos of Laree Farrell hang on a neighbors building next to Patty Farrell's backyard Thursday, May 22, 2014, in Colonie, N.Y. Laree died of a heroin overdose at her mother's home in 2013. (Will Waldron/Times ... more

Patty Farrell of Colonie stands in the bedroom where her daughter, Laree, died of a heroin overdose in 2013 at Farrell's home in Colonie, N.Y. Farrell was interviewed Thursday, May 22, 2014, in Colonie, N.Y. (Will Waldron/Times Union archive) less

Patty Farrell of Colonie stands in the bedroom where her daughter, Laree, died of a heroin overdose in 2013 at Farrell's home in Colonie, N.Y. Farrell was interviewed Thursday, May 22, 2014, in Colonie, N.Y. ... more

"It's absolutely ridiculous," the Colonie woman said Tuesday. "It's absurd. This stuff is deadly. Spending taxpayer money for heroin addicts to shoot up with nurses monitoring them so they don't die is not the answer. We need more prevention education, more treatment, better insurance coverage, longer rehab and much tougher penalties on users."

Farrell's voice of opposition is just one in a debate over the ethics and morality of providing a safe space for heroin usage staffed by medical professionals trained to address overdoses. The idea is part of a broader action plan to be unveiled Wednesday that was recommended to Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick by a city Drug Policy Committee.

As Myrick defends such a progressive proposal, his city faces myriad messy questions over the legality of taboo supervised drug use.

"That is the epitome of a gray area," Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said of what criminal ramifications nurses and doctors would face.

How much power the state wields over the Ithaca plan is unclear, even with the state health commissioner having broad powers to set regulations deemed to be in the interest of public health. New York has taken steps in the drug realm that push boundaries, though they don't rise to the level of condoning heroin usage.

As the federal government barred use of its taxpayer funds for needle exchange programs until 2009, the state implemented its program in 1992. A 2014 state report touted its success in dropping the percent of newly diagnosed HIV cases attributed to intravenous drug usage from 52 percent to 3 percent in two decades.

More controversial was the state's recent move to establish a medical marijuana program despite that drug's federal Schedule I status. A 2013 federal Department of Justiceguidance gave a de facto blessing to state-specific marijuana regulations that eased some concerns ahead of the New York Legislature's approval of the program in 2014. Legal marijuana products went on sale for the first time in January.

But passing a state law — the exact language of which is unclear — to smooth the way for a supervised injection facility would appear to be vastly different than clearing the way for medicinal marijuana.

"In the case of medical marijuana, we were allowing production and sale, and in order to get a company to do that, you need to tell them that it's legal," said Assembly Health Committee Chair Dick Gottfried, D-Manhattan. He later added, "The legal question would be whether providing the space somehow implicated you in the possession (of a controlled substance) crime."

The political will to at least look into the state's role in hosting the first supervised injection facility in the nation appears to be mixed. While Gottfried, an Assembly Democratic Majority member, said he is comfortable with the concept of such a harm-reduction model, state Sen. George Amedore, R-Rotterdam, expressed vehement opposition.

"It is an absolute, total misguided approach on how we're going to eradicate this heroin addiction problem we have in this state," said Amedore, who co-chairs the Senate's Heroin and Opioid Addiction Task Force. "I have not heard from one family, from one educator, one treatment provider, one law enforcement official, even the recovery peer support individuals or someone in recovery ever say that, 'I wish I could go to a drug den to inject more heroin.' "

Federal law presents its own challenges aside from heroin's Schedule I status. There also is a federal "crack house" statute that makes it illegal to open, lease, rent, use or maintain any place at which controlled substances are manufactured, distributed or used.

As on the state level, modifying such regulations is subject to political will.

There is a place for regulators to look if they do want to consider the merits of a supervised injection facility: Vancouver remains the only place in North America where such a facility exists. The facility, Insite, is geared toward long-term addicts and is part of a broader suite of treatment and supportive housing resources.

Insite, which is operated by Vancouver Coastal Health, must obtain an exemption each year from the Canadian federal health agency to operate, Vancouver Coastal Health spokeswoman Anna Marie D'Angelo said. That has at times been a political struggle, with the Canadian health minister being ordered in 2011 by the Supreme Court to grant exemptions to such facilities if they do not have a negative impact on public safety.

The exemption in part serves as a safety net for doctors and nurses who risk losing insurance coverage and their medical licenses as they work in a facility where the illegal activity is taking place. Insite has the support of city law enforcement and top provincial officials, D'Angelo said.

For his part, Myrick, whose office did not return a message left Tuesday morning, maintains that for all the barriers, an alternative proposal to address the heroin scourge is needed.

"If you keep seeing the same problems and proposing the same solutions, then you'll never make progress," he told the Ithaca Journal "So it's not enough to get angry, you've got to get smart, and you've got to be willing to try."

Among Ithaca's initial supporters is Andrew McKenna, a former heroin addict who served time in federal prison after robbing banks to feed his habit, who said heroin addiction is a complex problem.

"This idea hits my gut in a weird way and doesn't sound good at first, but the more you think about a harm-reduction approach, the more it starts to make sense," said McKenna, a former Justice Department prosecutor, who chronicled his heroin addiction in a memoir, "Sheer Madness: From Federal Prosecutor to Federal Prisoner," published last year.

"It's not a flop house where junkies can break the law as much as they can," said McKenna, of West Sand Lake. "If the goal is to steer people into recovery, I think it has merits. Studies have shown it to be a successful approach. The alternative is that young people are getting robbed and stabbed and young women are prostituting themselves in heroin houses, where they're shooting up and where some end up dying from overdoses. That's not desirable either."